Chapter 18

It was dark when Philip arrived back at Rose’s townhouse no further ahead on how to catch and discredit Kirkwood than when he left. He carried a sleeping Drake into the house and handed him over to a footman.

“His Grace has eaten like a hungry bear all afternoon,” he told the man. “Take him to his nanny. He’ll probably sleep till morning.” He turned to Booth. “Where’s Her Grace?”

“Still in her rooms, my lord,” Booth said. “I have not seen her since the modiste left.”

Philip nodded and started up the stairs. “I’ll see her before I change for dinner.”

He took the stairs two at a time, his body humming with excitement.

It had become clear during the men’s discussion that the safest option for all concerned would be for him to marry Rose, and as soon as possible. Tomorrow he would seek a special license. But tonight he would do everything possible to convince her that his heart belonged—and would always belong—to her, and that the very practical reason for their marriage did not alter that fact.

He reached her bedchamber and tapped briskly on the wood. No one came to answer the door. He knocked again. Still no answer. With growing trepidation, he turned the door handle and entered.

The room was dark and cold. What the hell? “Rose?”

There was no reply.

She had not been well. She might be unconscious on the floor. He could step on her in the dark. Where the devil was her woman?

He backed out of the room, shouted down the stairs for the butler, and seized a lit candle from the hallway sconce. Then, holding the candle aloft, he stepped back into the room.

The first thing he noticed was the gown tossed carelessly across the bed. But Rose herself was not in the bed. He moved toward the chairs set before the dead fire. But they, too, were empty.

Then he saw the chair from her writing desk. It lay on its side on the floor. But Rose wasn’t lying beside it. Where was she?

Fear took his breath like a fist to the throat. He wanted to call out for her but he couldn’t form the words. On shaky legs he moved to the bathing chamber. It, too, was empty.

He was coming back into the bedchamber when Booth came in in a flood of light and questions, a gaggle of servants at his heels.

“My lord?” The butler took in the state of the room, the open curtains, the dead fire in the grate. “Where is Her Grace?”

Philip finally managed to fill his lungs with air. “That’s what I want to know. Where’s her maid?”

“I haven’t seen her, my lord.” Booth swung around on the other servants crowding behind him. “Find Elaine, and bring her here immediately.”

Two footmen disappeared.

Philip’s heart told him what his brain refused to accept. Neither woman would be found in the house. “What visitors did Her Grace have this afternoon?”

Booth’s face went blank. “Only the modiste, my lord.”

“Very well.” Philip couldn’t stand still. Rose was in danger. Afraid. Alone. But he wasn’t alone. He stopped in midpace. “Booth. Send a lad to each of the Libertine Scholars. Tell them it is an emergency, and ask them to meet me here as soon as possible.”

“At once, my lord.” Booth rattled off instructions to another footman, who bowed and left the room. “I don’t understand, my lord. What has happened to Her Grace?”

“I don’t know for certain yet.” But he could make an excellent guess. Philip gestured to the man to draw aside. “Was the modiste the one Her Grace usually patronizes?”

Booth’s eyes widened. “Now that you mention it, my lord, no. She was dressed in the height of fashion but was taller than Madame Durand.”

Philip’s gut did a long, slow roll. “How long did she stay?”

“Not long, my lord.” Booth’s hands, normally so controlled, were clenching and unclenching into fists. “And when she left she took”—his eyes popped wide and his face turned sheet-white—“oh, my lord, she took a large trunk with her. The footmen brought it down. Elaine said Her Grace was donating some of her old gowns to charity.”

“Which footmen?”

“I was one, my lord.”

Philip glanced to the door. One of the two footmen Booth had sent to find Elaine had returned. “Was the trunk heavy or light?”

“Heavier than one that held only a few gowns, my lord,” the man said. “But Elaine said Her Grace had added a few other things, as well.”

“Where is Elaine now?” But he already knew the answer. Elaine was working with Kirkwood and had disappeared.

“Not in the house, my lord,” the footman said. “But her things are still in her room.”

“Show me.”

It didn’t take Philip long to search Elaine’s room. It was small and scrupulously tidy. There was nothing incriminating in her dresser or in the trunk.

Frustrated, Philip stood in the middle of the room and forced himself to calm down. If he were Elaine, and living in this tiny space, where would he hide any personal correspondence?—assuming she had not simply burned it.

The idea came quickly. During the war there was only one place he’d been able to keep private correspondence. He moved to the bed and flipped the mattress off it. A letter lay on the board of her bed frame.

Yes! He reached down and plucked up the note. But it was not what he expected. The letter was addressed to him.

Lord Cumberland,

I have done something unforgivable but could not find any way out of the mess I have caused.

Lord Francis Gowan, Lord Kirkwood’s son, has taken Her Grace to Chatsworth Manor. You know where that is, I hope, as it’s in Devon.

I could not leave this note anywhere obvious as His Lordship is watching me.

He is not the man I thought he was. Please hurry. He means to marry Her Grace, but even though you have forsaken her, I know you will not let a man like him bring up your child….

Your child…Rose was carrying his child.

The room around him seemed to tilt. Philip staggered, and the note fluttered to the floor.

No wonder Elaine had been so frosty to him in the garden; she honestly thought he’d walked away from his child.

His child.

His heart clenched so hard in his chest he thought he was having a heart attack. This was a dream—a dream he thought he’d never have. Now he knew it was all he’d ever wanted.

And Rose had not told him.

How could he blame her?

He could not. He would not. But he wasn’t about to let anyone take his chance at love and happiness away. Lord Francis Gowan was a dead man.

He crushed the note in his fist.

“My lord.” It was the footman. “The gentlemen are arriving.”

“Thank you.”

If Francis had already married Rose, she’d be lost to him forever. Philip pushed the anger, hurt, sorrow, and roiling fear away. No, by God, she would not. Not even if he had to make her a widow for a second time.

Philip had just reached the foyer when first Sebastian and then Grayson were admitted to the house.

“What’s wrong?” Grayson asked.

“Lord Kirkwood has Rose,” Philip said. “We head for Devon.”

Rose kept her eyes closed. Behind closed eyes she could pretend she was not surrounded by pitch-black. That those scurrying noises were not vermin.

She curled tightly into one corner of her mattress, rubbing her abdomen gently while she whispered to her unborn baby that Philip would save them.

But as the hours passed, and no one came, her assurances changed. Rescue didn’t have to come from Philip. It just had to come.

She had not long fallen into a light doze when the grating sound of the stone entrance opening brought her awake. She tensed, praying it was not Tremain. That he was far up north near Yorkshire, and it would take him a few days to travel back.

But when she saw who came in, carrying the flickering candle, raw anger blew her fatigue away, and she surged off the bed. She’d landed one hard slap on Elaine’s cheek before the woman’s words penetrated her mist of rage.

“My lady, please.” Elaine sounded frantic. “We don’t have time. Lord Francis’s men will be back soon. We have to flee now.”

With that, Elaine gripped her arm and started dragging her back through the hidden entrance.

Even the small amount of light coming from the fire as Rose stumbled into the room made her blink, and her eyes started to water. Half-blind, she allowed Elaine to guide her through the house to the back stairs of the silent manor.

When Elaine opened the door to the outside, though, she cursed. “It’s snowing.”

Rose looked down at her feet. She wore only the dainty slippers she’d been wearing when Francis had spirited her away. She was also still clad only in her shift and robe. “I’ll freeze to death out there if they don’t catch us first.”

Elaine pulled off her own shawl and wrapped it around Rose’s shoulders. “I wish we could find you something more, my lady, but I’ve looked through the house and there is nothing there, not even blankets. I’m sorry. I should have brought one from the room where they kept you. But I dare not go back and we dare not stay longer. The snow will cover our trail, so it’s the perfect time to leave. There is a cottage about a mile to the left.”

A mile. “Where are we?” Rose asked, her teeth already chattering.

Elaine eyed her cautiously. “Devon. Near the coaching inn where we stayed on our way to Lord Kirkwood’s house party. I’m not sure precisely where. But we must leave. Then we must find shelter. Perhaps at the cottage we’ll find some clothes.”

Rose cast a glance back over her shoulder and then out at the gentle snow. Already she could feel her limbs starting to tremble. One mile. She could do that. She placed a hand over the child curled up in her womb. Of course she could. She had no choice.

“Then let us go before the snow really starts to fall. We will have to move fast.”

And wrapping the shawl more tightly around her, she stepped out into the cold and moved off in the direction of the cottage.

Even though the ground was not yet covered by the white flakes, it still took them far too long stumbling in the dark before they smelled the smoke from the little cottage’s chimney.

By the time they opened the gate Rose knew she was in trouble. She could no longer feel her feet, and her hands—which she had tucked into her armpits for warmth—were like blocks of ice.

When she stumbled on the path, Elaine ran ahead and pounded on the door. It opened a fraction of an inch and a woman’s face appeared. “Who’s there?”

“Can you help us please?” Elaine sounded frantic. “Her Grace is almost frozen to death.”

“Her Grace?” The door opened wider. “Lord have mercy!”

Rose, having reached the house, almost collapsed on the doorstep, but the young woman threw the door open wide, grasped her under the arms, and helped Elaine half drag her into the house. The door slammed behind them with a comforting thud.

“Put her near the fire and I’ll bring blankets.” The young woman glanced down at Rose’s feet. “And thick stockings, too.”

Only a few minutes later Rose had been stripped to the skin and was swaddled in blankets before a blazing fire, with only her face showing. Elaine had removed her sodden slippers and replaced them with thick stockings.

She let the warmth return to her frozen bones. Soon she wanted to scream from the pain of her thawing hands and feet.

When Rose’s hands stopped trembling, the young woman pressed a mug of hot tea into them. As the heat of the liquid warmed her fingers they began to tingle again, and her insides began to thaw.

“Elaine,” she said to the woman she had thought her friend. “You will tell me everything later. But first you will get out of those soaked garments and into something warm yourself.”

Elaine stopped rubbing warmth into Rose’s legs and bowed her head. “Yes, Your Grace.”

Rose closed her eyes and drank her tea, letting the tingle of returning warmth nip and bite. She wasn’t safe, but she was safer than she had been. And her child? Yes, the child was safe. And Drake, too, would be safe because he was with Philip.

Elaine returned, dried and in a thick winter gown, and took up her gentle massage once more.

Rose took another sip of tea. “I want to thank you for saving me tonight,” she said quietly, “but I cannot for the world understand why you betrayed me in the first place.”

Elaine’s eyes filled with tears. “I thought that since Lord Cumberland had denied your child was his, that you’d be disgraced. I could not bear that.”

At the sound of Philip’s title, the woman, who had been stoking the fire, turned their way, eyebrows lifted.

“We will discuss this later,” Rose said. It was all she was prepared to say with someone else listening.

For the first time Rose actually took note of the woman who was helping them. It was obvious she was with child. It was also likely they were putting her in terrible danger by their presence. If Lord Francis or his men called here—as was possible given the cottage was so close to the manor—they might kill this innocent witness to their wicked deed.

“Thank you for helping me,” Rose said. “You are most kind. What is your name?”

The young woman made a curtsey. “Faith, Your Grace.”

“You’re Philip’s Faith?” The words slipped out before Rose had time to think.

A frown crossed her face. “Do you mean Lord Cumberland?”

Rose nodded.

“Aye,” Faith said. “Lord Cumberland and his younger brother saved me from—from a terrible life.”

Now it was more than the pain in her hands and feet that made her want to weep. “When is your child due?”

Faith smiled and patted her belly. “In three months.”

That meant Philip had been with Faith while in a relationship with Rose. No wonder he did not want to marry her. He did not love her as she loved him.

“His Lordship has been most kind.” Faith sounded almost tender.

“I’m sure he has. He’s a kind man.” Rose meant the words.

“Yes, he gave me a job at the big house and even found me a husband.” Her hand rubbed over the large swell under her apron. “My child won’t be born out of wedlock as I’d feared.”

Unlike the child Rose carried. Could she force Philip’s hand by telling him of the child? The past few hours had made her sure of one thing: she would sacrifice anything, her life, her happiness, for the innocent little life she carried. She would even marry a man who did not really love her, to protect it.

If she survived this kidnapping.

Rose glanced toward the door. “Is your husband at home? There are some very bad men looking for me.”

Faith shook her head and her face softened. “But he should be back soon. He went to the market. He doesn’t like leaving me on my own, but we wanted to sell our cheese before the snow sets in.”

“Your arranged marriage is to your liking, I take it?” Rose said, hardly aware of what she was saying.

Faith nodded. “Yes, Your Grace. David is a fine man. I think I fell in love the moment we met. He took my hand, and smiled, and bowed over my hand as if I were a proper lady.” She looked down at her bump. “He loves me and is prepared to raise another man’s child. I did not know men as kind existed in this world.”

Rose bit her lip against a tart reply. Of course the man would be happy to bring up an earl’s bastard. Philip would, no doubt, provide a large regular payment for the child’s keep.

Suddenly, the door handle rattled. All three women froze.

Then, as the handle began to turn, Elaine jumped in front of her mistress, and Faith rose to her feet.

The door opened and a man blew in on a swirl of chilled air and snow.

“Oh!” Faith’s face lit up as she rushed toward him, hands outstretched. “Thank goodness you are home, love. We must send word to Flagstaff Castle. Lord Cumberland needs to know where to find Her Grace.”